YMMV / Ajin

• Awesome Music:
  • "Yoru wa Nemureru kai?" by flumpool, which is the first opening song of the anime and the ending song of the movie. You can understand how bleak Kei Nagai's life (and Ajin universe in general) is by reading the lyrics.
  • "How Close You Are" by Kei's voice actor, Mamoru Miyano, which is the first ending song of the anime.
• Complete Monster:
  • Manga:
    • "Satō", real name Samuel T. Owen, is a bold, brilliant, and charismatic, yet utterly amoral Ajin. A skilled soldier, Satō awakened as an Ajin after being caught and killed by a criminal syndicate following his own murder of hundreds in the underworld. Seeking the ultimate challenge, Satō frees other Ajin to challenge the whole Japanese government, forming a resistance movement while incapacitating any Ajin uninterested in his cause. Threatening to decapitate protagonist Kei Nagai when the latter refuses to join him and make Kei watch as a new head regrows to take his body, Satō begins planning to throw the whole country into turmoil under the guise of revolution. Personally killing hundreds in a plane crash to destroy a pharmaceutical company testing on Ajin, Satō proceeds to murder a list of targets before aiming to take control of Japan altogether. Tricking his way into a military base, Satō swiftly takes control of it, using the jets for Suicide Attacks he revives from repeatedly to murder Japanese officials, seeking to murder his way to escape Japan and make his way to a new country to seek more entertainment.
    • Minister Yuuwa Tokui uses his position in the Ajin Control Commission to line his pockets. Cutting a deal with a pharmaceutical company, the Minister allows Ajin to be tortured through experimentation to develop new drugs, with one suffering for years. Capturing more Ajin to continue the cruel experiments, the Minister only relents to negotiate for peace with Satō after his own life is threatened, and when double-crossed, furiously tries to torture and encase Satō's unarmed former subordinate in cement.
  • Anime: "Satō", real name Samuel T. O'Brian, is an even more vicious version of the cunning Ajin terrorist. Once a soldier discharged for his trigger-happy brutality, Satō discovers his immortality and chooses to entertain himself by forming an Ajin extremist group claiming to fight for Ajin rights. Toppling a building to destroy a pharmaceutical company as part of his plan, Satō kills countless before stealing canisters of nerve gas and capturing a military base, from which he threatens to fire them with missiles and destroy Japan lest the government yield to his demands. Rejecting the offered peaceful compromise as "boring", Satō fires one of his missiles upon the Prime Minister's office, the blast killing many in such a brutal attack that causes many of his own subordinates to defect out of horror.
• Crosses the Line Twice: The story opens with the protagonist Kei getting run over. The moment is treated as horrifying, both because it mangles Kei, but it also shows that he is an Ajin when he comes back to life from it. Yet when it happens again in the final moments of the manga, it manages to be absolutely hilarious. Possibly because he has experienced much worse by this point.
• Evil Is Cool: Yes, Sato might be a villain to the core, but he's just so awesome that the fandoms in both Japan and the west love him. Judging by comment sections, he's the most popular character in the series by a safe margin, due to his clever tactics, charisma and general badassery.
• Growing the Beard: It's generally agreed that the series picks up when Gamon Sakurai takes over as the writer at the end of volume 1.
• Jerkass Woobie: Tanaka may be an extremist willing to commit mass murder for the sake of securing ajin rights, but the Japanese government put him through ten years of absolute hell for no reason other than because he just so happened to be an ajin. It also helps that he has some Pet the Dog moments that make it clear that he's a far better person than Sato.
• Magnificent Bastard: "Satō", real name Samuel T. Owen, is a remorseless yet boldly audacious Ajin terrorist. Once having been caught and killed after massacring hundreds of criminals despite having lost a leg as a soldier, Satō reawakened as an Ajin. Recruiting fellow Ajin to his revolution, Satō intends to throw Japan into anarchy to alleviate his boredom and makes a series of threats promising to ultimately take control of the government. Assassinating targets including a well-defended security company executive by cutting off his own hand to discreetly mail it to the location of his target and killing himself to regenerate from the severed hand, Satō easily poses himself to force officials to meet his demands. Deciding to challenge himself more, Satō uses trickery to capture Japan's most well-armed military base and uses his immortality to commit Suicide Attacks and revive from them to utterly dismantle the Japanese government. Outplaying protagonist Kei Nagai at every turn, Satō nearly escapes Japan to set out anew for another challenging battle overseas, only stopped by Kei relying on sheer luck to defeat him and takes his loss with grace and respect for his foe.
• Unintentional Period Piece: A rather minor one, but Chapter 47 is titled "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare," which can catch some readers off-guard since the game it's referencing is rarely brought up nowadays in discussions of first-person shooters.
• The Woobie: Shimomura was seriously dealt a bad hand in life. She grew up in a broken home with her mother and her abusive stepfather. She worked her ass off to save up enough money to leave home as soon as she turned 18, only for her stepfather to find out about her bank details and blow through everything she earned on girls. After she tried and failed to take her own life, her stepfather proceeded to sexually assault her, at which point she left everything behind and ran away. She managed to earn a meagre living as a prostitute for a few years, before collapsing from an unnamed illness. After finding out that her mother was killed in a fight with her stepfather after walking in on him trying to report her as an ajin, Shimomura signed on with Tosaki to work as his bodyguard.

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